The closures have had a disproportionate impact on bars catering to women and people of color: Between 20, LGBTQ bar listings dropped by an estimated 37 percent, and those serving people of color plummeted by almost 60 percent, according to the study. Throughout the 1980s, there were more than 1,500 such bars, a number that has declined steeply since the late ‘90s, with fewer than 1,000 existing today, according to a study published last year by Oberlin College and Conservatory professor Greggor Mattson. Historically, these spaces were where the LGBTQ community gathered to find romance, make long-lasting friendships and engage in community activism. Lemon Brandsįor more than two decades, gay bars, especially those owned by people of color, have been disappearing. Charles Hughes, left, and Richard Solomon, owners of Lambda Lounge, one of two Black-owned gay bars remaining in NYC. Long before anyone had heard of Covid-19, these LGBTQ social spaces were dwindling across the country. At any rate this petty dispute caused Pittsburgh’s oldest and most famous brewery to leave the city.But a global health crisis is not the only headwind their bar, Lambda Lounge, and the few remaining Black-owned gay bars in the United States are facing. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to to figure out that most of the liquid used was not leaving the brewery through the sewer system, but going out in bottles, cans & kegs! Now I’m not saying it didn’t eventually end up in the sewer system somewhere, just not at this location. I’m not sure if this is my native Lawrenceville or possibly Bloomfield, but I do know this, Iron City Beer in not brewed here anymore, it’s brewed in Latrobe, Pennsylvania after a dispute with the Pittsburgh water authority being charged a sewage fee based on the water used. I suspect the name has something to do with the proximity to the old Pittsburgh Brewing Company, brewer of Iron City Beer that is across the street on Liberty Avenue. I’ve driven by this neighborhood bar many times on my way home and always wondered about it. Oh, and my sister told me that his younger sister told her a few years back that michael’s older brother had killed him. He was a good friend, a gentle, loving manchild. why hadn’t i seen it before? i stood there, on the spot they found his body, and cried and cried as i hadn’t since it happened. This recent visit to pittsburgh, while walking that familiar road nearby, for the first time i saw the cross on the side. why aren’t you looking into his hateful mafia stepfather?!!! i believe he had him killed." no we weren’t affiliated with the gay crime underworld. no shame as i answered them eye-to-eye, stone-faced, angry: The story goes on as the police and insurance investigators grilled me on his sex life, on *my* sex life – we were "known", we frequented gay bars, surely this was the result of a lover’s quarrel, or suicide … furious, i railed at the police, the investigators as they tried to intimidate me in front of my parents. i was a pallbearer, and layed the flowers on his coffin before lowering him into the ground. Michael did die the next day, without ever regaining consciousness. said "to prepare her for the inevitable". his mother answered, and as i told her the story, she turned to ask her husband why he told me michael was dead. i left work in a daze and went back to his house. she told me she had just called the hospital and he was still in a coma.
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a few hours later i called my stepmum from work to tell her. penetti patted my back, "comforting" me with "it’s for the best". his brutal stepfather, who hated him because he was queer, told me he had died. he remained in a coma.Ģ days later, instead of calling, i stopped by his house to ask about him. we were hallucinating madly, but the fear and adrenaline was cutting into it sharply, clearing my head all too lucidly. I told my parents, grabbed my friend and a car, and raced to the hospital.
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It seemed like only minutes after he left that i got a phone call from a neighbor: "you’re friends with michael lowe, right? they just found him unconscious on the side of the road next to route 8. as was usual for us, he was going to hitch a ride, down route 8. one sunday night i was tripping on acid with another friend, at home, and michael came by to borrow a shirt to go clubbing in town. Around 30 years ago, my best friend michael and i lived on the same street, in our parents’ homes.